There are known forage bales of prismatic kind that are formed in packers that compact the material and tie it by thread.
The conveyor systems of said forage bales must have special care with the threads that tie the bale to prevent the breakage of these threads and the bale to be loosened.
In the market there are conveyor systems for forage bales comprising driving means for said bales and dragging means of said driving means to move said bales along a conveying direction.
One of the conveyor systems usually used is that which consists in a dragging chain provided with rigid teeth. This system presents the advantage, with respect the other existing systems, that the teeth stick in the bales obtaining this way a suitable drive to move securely the bale along a sloping surface.
Therefore, the chains provided with teeth are usually used in bale grouping machines, or in bale auto-charging machines, to collect the bale from the ground. However, the conveyor systems based on chains provided with teeth have a lot of drawbacks.
One of the main drawbacks of the systems based on teeth chains is that the teeth often cause the breakage of the bale threads, because once stuck, they prevent the relative movement of the bale with respect to the chain, being impossible to release the thread from the tooth if said tooth has trapped a thread.
Another drawback of the teeth chains is the fact that it is a conveyor system that does not permit to trace curved paths with a little turn radius to change the conveying direction of the bales. This is because a turn necessarily involves a movement of the bale with respect to the chain that, in this case, is prevented by the teeth.
Another added drawback of the conveyor systems based in tooth chains is that to move the bales according to a direction transversal to the conveying direction it is necessary to release previously the bales from the teeth, which converts an “a priori” simple operation, as would be to remove the bale from the conveyor line, in a very complex operation.